But suddenly, inexplicably, voices rise and the joy is back: V’Atah Hu Melech — But You are King, G-d Who lives for all eternity!

I had the piece written, ready on schedule. It’s never nice to mess with the magazine’s production schedule, but especially at this time of year, when the calendar is a bunch of half-days and much of the production staff is fasting.

Then, on Motzaei Rosh Hashanah I heard news that shook me; that piece was shelved and I’m trying, just trying, to take the heaviness in my heart and turn it into words.

Perhaps the most moving part of the Mussaf of the Yamim Noraim starts with Unesaneh Tokef: We speak of the power of the day, and the gravity of judgment. But there is hope — a person can deflect a harsh decree, for Hashem knows of our frail nature. Man is like a broken shard… like a breeze that blows away and dust that scatters, like a dream that flies away. It appears to be a reflective rumination on the transient nature of man’s existence: Now he is here, and now he is gone.

But suddenly, inexplicably, voices rise and the joy is back: V’Atah Hu Melech — But You are King, G-d Who lives for all eternity!

How does this statement counter the earlier disheartening thought?

Since He is eternal, if we have an opportunity to use our brief sojourn in This World to encounter Him, to reinforce His glory, to elevate Him, then we, too, become part of that chai v’kayam and we, too, can live.

My friend Chaim Tzvi Katz was suddenly niftar on Rosh Hashanah, at just 28 years old, and this is what he taught me: Celebrate each moment of this fleeting, ephemeral existence and sing its song.

Chatzi, as he was known, lost his mother when he was 15 years old. In a piece he wrote for this magazine at the close of the year of aveilus, he showed a bit of the depth and sophistication hidden under the untucked white shirt.

He reflected on the year of having to daven from the amud — the inconvenience, humiliation, and awkwardness of it.

Now that the year is coming to an end, my first thoughts were… freedom at last. I could finally be a normal teenager.

But now I have mixed feelings…. You see, this whole ordeal gave me a special connection, a relationship to you, and you are looking down and smiling at me. I feel like you are going to Hashem and saying, “Look at my son and what he does for me. Please do for him.”

The physical and emotional struggles kept me thinking about what you did for me each day…. When I fought myself to get out of bed early, I remembered how you would drag yourself out of bed to wake me and lovingly send me off to yeshivah, despite your condition.

The year is coming to an end, but I don’t want to lose you. I will try to do good things for you….

Love,

Your ben yachid,

Chaim Tzvi

The imagery — a 16-year-old bochur pulling himself out of bed to make it to davening on time for the first Kaddish d’Rabbanan every day for a full year — would become his story, and it was this that made his music so meaningful.

In Lakewood, at Yeshiva Ateres Yisroel, he found a rebbi and with his rebbi’s encouragement, he eventually started to sing professionally — but he never became a professional singer.

Meaning — he was never an “other” to his audience, but part of the crowd, enjoying the music along with them. He was laughing uproariously along with the over-excited friends of the bar mitzvah boy; bursting with pride along with the 17-year-old mesayemim. Those were his favorite settings: bochurim, toil, and a room filled with dreams. And he was happy — so genuinely happy — for a chassan a year or two younger than him.

Sometimes a gig doesn’t go — people are speaking loudly, the sound system is having a bad night, or the host has placed him behind a potted plant, but Chatzi was able to remove himself from the equation and tease the hapless singer — himself — to roll his eyes good-naturedly and say “oh well.” I suspect he even enjoyed it, because this was human stuff. He never wanted to be shiny and he had no brand. He was just us, the people he was reaching.

He would talk about the struggle to connect, to feel, to really daven, but when he sang, you realized that he was way ahead of you. He didn’t announce that he was about to start davening or say “Ribbono shel Olam” or “Tatte,” but you could hear the slight shift in his voice and you knew that he was reaching deep: He knew that the Ribbono shel Olam is the Avi yesomim, and that he had a privileged relationship. Hashem malei rachamim, racheim alai.

We live in a golden age of Jewish music, with so many gifted singers, but I don’t know if there is another who can compare to Chatzi when it came not to showing his neshamah on stage, and instead using that stage to show you your neshamah.

At his very first gig, at this time of year, he sang the tune of “Chamol al Maasecha.” As he reached the high part, the Lakewood Rosh Yeshivah, Rav Yisroel Neuman, was leaving the hall.

Tukdash Adon, sang Chatzi, and the Rosh Yeshivah turned around and came back in, closing his eyes. Rav Yisroel is this generation’s example of the masmid to whom every second is cherished, so if he made the decision to reenter the hall, it is because he heard something.

This column is not meant to be an obituary, but an opinion: My untucked, uninhibited friend wasn’t super opinionated, but he had a unique ability to make you rethink a topic.

I once spoke publicly about Kabbalas Shabbos and the joy a Yid feels with the onset of the holy day. Chatzi took issue with the premise. “Maybe the books that speak of the anticipation that fills a Yid on Erev Shabbos aren’t doing us a favor,” he challenged me, as always, the lamdan cutting through the haze. “Maybe, it’s just that you work hard all week, you don’t really see your family much, and when you come home from shul Friday night, you’re anticipating the chance to just sit with people you love, enjoying a delicious seudah and singing.”

Being single, he told me, he experienced it differently. “I am usually a guest somewhere else for Shabbos, and I don’t have the experience of going into my own house, surrounded by my loved ones. I would also want to feel that joy, though. Shabbos isn’t just for married guys with their perfectly set table and kinderlach in matching Shabbos pajamas.”

Having shaken me out of my presumptuous delusions about my own appreciation for Shabbos, he became my chavrusa. On Fridays, we started learning a sefer called Sidduro shel Shabbos. The words of the sefer are esoteric, at times, and lofty. I would read them without completely understanding them sometimes, but Chatzi got them. Even if he wasn’t sure what each word meant, he perceived the depth of their message, sometimes humming them.

You see, the sefer speaks about how Shabbos is the stuff of humans, about the power of our little actions and feelings to prepare ourselves and create keilim to receive the light, and this was Chatzi’s turf: He had tasted pain at a young age, and he had learned to smile through it.

That was his music. That was his chein.

He was single, and Shabbos involved planning — he never did get to make Kiddush at his own table, but he learned to make Kiddush of a different sort, working to find the spark of Shabbos within himself and to make himself a vessel to receive it.

He taught me not to confuse love of family-time, good food, and a relaxed pace for a love of Shabbos, but to make sure its the real thing. And he showed me that a bochur still dreaming of a home of his own could aspire to grow in their love of Shabbos.

Chatzi’s music was not the song of angels, but of humans, and that is why it resonated.

Chaim Tzvi ben Rav Elya Nota. He lived a short life — like a fleeting dream — but, as if he sensed this, he used it to create a song that will play on. Notes of submission, notes of pain, notes of hope, and notes of glory to the One Who endures.

Ashirah laHashem b’chayai. We are here to sing. With his every breath, Chatzi sang.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1033)